George Hunter MacThomas Thoms

[2][9] In the 1870s he was Vice-Chairman under William Chambers of the Committee of Subscribers to the restoration of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh,[10] and himself paid for the Ladies' Vestry (now the souvenir shop) to be added to the building.

He left the residue of his estate, the then sizeable sum of around £60,000 to Kirkwall Town Council in Orkney for the restoration of St Magnus Cathedral (the equivalent of £7 million in 2000).

Thoms was well known for his many eccentricities, which included wearing rubber-sided waistcoats for laughing and flirtation, serving champagne and laxative cocktails to the Commissioners for Northern Lighthouses, fining his pet cat, and carrying around gutta percha to repair the broken hearts of ladies and a schoolteacher's tawse or strap to "punish" any children he met.

In one judgement he stated: "Procrastination is in Wick the soul of business", and in 1888 Caithness solicitors petitioned unsuccessfully for Thoms' office to be abolished.

Matthew Armour, Free Church Minister of Sanday in Orkney, for breach of the peace at a Conservative election meeting.

The case, which came to trial before the Lord Justice-Clerk, Sir John H. A. Macdonald, and a civil jury for five days in February 1905, caused a sensation and was widely reported in the press.

[23] The souvenir shop of St Giles Cathedral has his coat of arms set into an internal wall in painted and gilt plaster.